Curtain raiser: Mad Horse Theater Company moves its main stage to South Portland

SOUTH PORTLAND — When the Mad Horse Theater Company launches its new season Oct. 11, the curtain will go up outside of Portland for the first time in the troupe’s 27-year history. This year, the main stage will be located at what has been Mad Horse’s rehearsal hall for the past three years, the former Hutchins School on Mosher Street.

If you don’t think that’s kind of a big deal, consider this – at its Oct. 4 meeting, the City Council is slated to adopt a special proclamation marking the event.

“We want to announce to our community that we have our first professional theater group coming into South Portland,” said Mayor Patti Smith on Monday.

“I will be there at the first show to welcome everyone,” said Smith. “This is fantastic. We always talk about trying to create culture and arts in our city and so many times we get compared to Portland and we pale in comparison. But now we have our own little opportunity to have some of what Portland has always had, in our own way. Little steps like this – although this is a big step – show that we have potential.

“We really do want to build a creative economy in South Portland,” said City Manager Jim Gailey.  “The whole goal of going into a lease with Mad Horse three years ago was to bring that very thing into that area. What they do and the variety of what they do only enhances the fabric of that neighborhood.”

David Jacobs, who joined Mad Horse’s board of directors last year and has served as chairman since June, said the decision to move to South Portland was “easy to make” once the board learned that its most recent venue, Lucid Stage, would close.

“We decided that using our home would make the most sense at this stage in our growth,” said Jacobs.

In August, Lucid Stage, which has operated since late 2010 at 29 Baxter Blvd., announced in an email to supporters that it would close for good at the end of this month.

"Unfortunately, with a costly overhead, we simply couldn't make ends meet while remaining faithful to our mission of proving an affordable and accessible arts center," wrote Lucid director Liz McMahon.

Christine Marshall, who has served as Mad Horse’s artistic director for the past eight seasons, says the company will continue a tradition begun while on the Lucid stage. Since 2008, the company has sponsored a “Dark Night” series, performing secondary shows or subletting its rented space to other theater groups on the early weeknights when the theater is normally dark.

When Mad Horse kicks off the new season Oct. 13 with David Mamet’s "November" – a comedy in which an unpopular American president tries desperately to hold on to his office during the lead up to Election Day – it will fill what are normally the down days – Monday, Oct. 15-Wednesday, Oct. 17 – with a production of "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson." That show, produced in conjunction with the Stages children’s theater group that shares the Hutchins School with Mad Horse, is described as a “Wild West rock musical” about the founding of the Democratic Party.

“These are both really, really funny productions,” said Marshall. “Elections seem to get less civil every time. Our hope is that both shows will help people appreciate that there is some humor to be had and that it’s OK to laugh about it all.”

On Friday, Marshall was at the Hutchins School converting the classroom of the 1873 building that has been a rehearsal hall for nearly four years into a replica of the Oval Office, with heavy curtains on all four walls to create a “black box” environment.

“That’s the model, the kind of intimate theater that Mad Horse has always used,” said Jacobs. “So, this is already an atmosphere that we favor for putting on the productions that we do.”

Marshall says the new space should be able to accommodate nearly 60 theater-goers, just 10 less than could be sat at Lucid. Even in its largest space, on Portland’s outer Forest Avenue in the early 1990s, Mad Horse only sat 100 people per show.

“There’s a better connection between the audience and the actor when there is a smaller venue,” said Jacobs, of the company’s performance philosophy. “Certainly, we all enjoy going to shows where there are huge set pieces and huge costumes and the whole nine yards, but in this type of environment, I think, it's easier for the audience to get absorbed in what the actor is doing and what the intentions are of the writer.”

As a resident, professional – though non-union – theater ensemble, Mad Horse has always tried to pick plays that, to quote its mission statement, “compassionately examine and illuminate the enduring aspects of the human condition.”

In some cases, like the opening shows for this season, that exploration of social concern and personal transformation takes the form of comedy. In other cases, the experience is more poignant.

For example, Marshall still chokes up when contemplating "The Normal Heart," a play about the start of the AIDS crisis performed by Mad Horse two years ago. At each scene change during the show, a date and an increasingly larger number is written on a chalkboard to represent victims who have succumbed to the disease.

After the show, audience members were invited to add to the chalk board the name of a person each knew who had died of complications from the disease.

“You can’t help watching a play like that and remember a very specific person,” said Marshall. “After the first preview night, one side was completely filled. The idea of ever erasing these names is just crazy to us.”

All Mad Horse shows, Marshall says, whether comedy or drama, are expected to create some cathartic experience for its audience.

“There are some shows that we do that might not be approached by larger theaters because they’re a little controversial, or maybe they’re not as well known,” said Marshall. “We choose plays that fit that mission, and while that mission may seem very serious, there’s a lot of transcendent that can come out of humor.”

Whether Mad Horse continues to use the Hutchins School as its main stage after June 2013 remains to be seen. The space has certain challenges, like support posts in the middle of the room that lighting designer Tom Wyatt says can create challenges.

“We know that it will work this season, but it might cause some complications in future seasons, if we have a show with a larger cast,” said Jacobs. “So, we have yet to determine if this will suit us as out forever home.”

Jacobs said the Mad Horse board already is looking to potential venues for its 2012-2013 season, though it has yet to find any that measure up to the Hutchins School. Even if the main stage moves once more, it’s doubtful Mad Horse will abandon the building entirely.

While the city last summer used a $59,106 Community Development Block Grant to rehabilitate the outside of the school, Mad Horse has invested $30,000 inside, using two Davis Family Foundation grants. This fall, the theater and the city will team to install a natural gas boiler.

“To date, we’ve had a pretty good working relationship,” said Gailey.

“We’re really hoping for a trickle-down effect,” said Smith, citing the many restaurants, art studios and other businesses that benefit from what is a growing theater district on South Portland’s east end, with Mad Horse, Stages, Lyric Theater and Portland Players within blocks of each other.

More than half of the cast and crew associated with the next show, "November," live in South Portland, within that same area. The only question, Jacobs says, is whether audiences are ready to discover what the locals already know.

“We have a very loyal audience,” he said, “but like any business, we can’t survive on our core alone. We have to expand live theater to new audiences. The big unknown is whether people are going to come across the bridge and what support we’ll get from South Portland in general.”